Heatwave forecast across north-central and southern Mozambique through Feb. 16
Three siblings involved in the theft of 170 million meticais (about 5.6 million US dollars, at the exchange rate of the time) from the Mozambican government’s Agricultural Development Fund (FDA) on Wednesday told the Maputo City Court that they had neither requested nor signed any contracts to finance agricultural or livestock projects.
Gerson, Dercio and Binaia Manganhe were questioned separately by judge Alexandre Samuel, and simply repeated what they had already said during the preliminary investigations of the case.
Gerson and Dercia claimed they were only involved because their sister, Milda Cossa, who was personal assistant to the then chairperson of the FDA, Setina Titosse, had told them that the FDA was financing livestock projects.
They asked her what was needed to benefit from such funding, and she said they only had to present their personal tax identification number (NUIT) and a copy of their identity cards, and open accounts in the BCI (Commercial and Investment Bank, the country’s second largest commercial bank).
They did as Cossa said, despite already holding accounts in another bank, the Millennium-BIM. They produced the documents Cossa had required, and sought to deliver them to Binaia, but she told them to hand the paper work personally to Setina Titosse.
So they went to Titosse’s house and gave her the documents. None of them seemed to think it strange that the head of an institution would deal personally with the documents, or that they should be delivered to her house rather than to the FDA offices.
Binaia told the judge that she had been contacted personally by Titosse, who asked for the same documents from her, and insisted that she open a BCI account.
Gerson, Dercia and Binaia all said they had never benefitted from FDA financing, but admitted that large sums of money had entered their accounts. They claimed they never knew where the money came from.
They transferred the money to the accounts of Titosse, Cossa and others whom they did not know. They even gave their bank debit cards to Titosse and Cossa. The cards have never been returned, they said.
Their livestock projects never existed and they admitted they had never even visited the places where the projects were to be implemented, and had never appointed representatives to do so on their behalf.
On paper, the projects were located in Chibuto, Mandlakazi and Guija districts in Gaza province, and in Morrumbene in the neighbouring province of Inhambane. They told the judge that they had never been in these districts, had no land, and had never worked with livestock.
They thus contradicted testimony given by FDA staff and co-accused such as Celeste Ismael who had told the court that they had visited the project sites, found them suitable for livestock and then written opinions favourable to granting the finance.
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.